Lead Software Engineer - AI-Driven, Secure Platform

Edge Executive Search Group

Johannesburg

On-site

ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,800,000

Full time

14 days+

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Job summary

Edge Executive Search Group in Johannesburg seeks a Lead Software Engineer to drive hands-on technical leadership across the full stack, architecture and AI-enabled product development. You will mentor a cross-functional squad and own solution design, APIs, data models and security, while maintaining production-grade code in a modern DevOps environment.

The role emphasizes architectural direction, coding standards, and scalable reference architectures, with collaboration across Product, QA,

Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in CS/SE/IT or related
10+ years of professional full stack software engineering experience
3+ years in a Lead or Senior Engineering role providing technical direction, code review and mentorship
Hands-on across front-end, back-end, APIs and DB development
Production experience with .NET/C#, Node.js or Java/Spring and modern front-end frameworks
Experience with Angular, React/Next.js, Vue/Nuxt, etc.
Strong TypeScript/JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3, responsive design
Experience with REST, GraphQL, gRPC and integration patterns
Experience with cloud (Azure/AWS)
Docker and Kubernetes
CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, GitLab)
Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/Bicep)
Database design and tuning (SQL/NoSQL)
Automated testing across unit/integration/contract/e2e/load
Secure coding, auth, secret management, data protection
AI-assisted development tools in production
RAG, embeddings, vector databases, prompt engineering
Agile and DevOps delivery environments
Experience in fintech or regulated environments advantageous
Azure or AWS certifications advantageous
Agile/Scrum/SAFe certifications advantageous

Responsibilities

Design, build, test and deploy end-to-end features across front-end, back-end, API and database layers
Own technical solution design, including data models, API contracts, UI patterns and third-party integrations
Provide technical direction across a development squad while remaining actively involved in production engineering
Define and maintain coding, branching, testing and engineering standards
Lead architectural and technology decisions and document key decisions through design docs and ADRs
Establish scalable reference architectures across front-end, services, APIs and data layers
Conduct code reviews and facilitate pair and mob programming to improve quality
Champion CI/CD, automated testing, observability, trunk-based development and DevSecOps
Use delivery metrics to improve engineering flow, quality and developer experience
Mentor engineers across levels and support targeted technical development
Participate in technical interviews, onboarding and capability-building
Partner with QA to establish unit, integration, contract, end-to-end and performance testing
Identify risks and drive mitigation
Embed secure-by-design principles into development
Drive remediation of technical debt and incidents
Translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions
Maintain architecture diagrams, API specifications, runbooks and READMEs
Champion AI coding assistant usage and safe practices for AI-assisted engineering
Deliver production AI capabilities using LLMs, embeddings, vector DBs and function/tool calls